Text and the Web

Text on the Web is an intricate blend of focused content, word choice,
writing style, and display. Although the former three require skills and
techniques beyond the scope of this book, the display of your content can be
entirely addressed by Dreamweaver.

Well-written, easily accessible content draws users to your site and keeps
them there. It's not just the words themselves that grab visitors, but how
easy it is to read them on the page. Several concerns when working with text
content are

Use of typefaceThe font you choose plays a role in how your
content looks visually, as well as how easy it is to read. Font colors are best
when organized and consistent, and font sizing is an important issue when it
comes to readability.

Chunking textHow you break your content into separate
paragraphs, use line breaks to format text, and add lists where appropriate can
make or break a visitor's ability to scan and read without causing eye
fatigue.

White spaceAlso referred to as negative space, this
is the space behind the words and objects. Use of margins, indents, and block
quotes where appropriate will help you in arranging content
effectively.

Garish fonts, blinking text, and poor contrast between the color of the text
and the background are not a matter of style, but a matter of readability, or
the lack thereof. Two different sites might cover the same topicone with
well-written but hard-to-read content, and the other with mediocre but
well-displayed content. Chances are, most visitors will choose to return to the
site that's most accessible, even if they can't get all the answers
there.

Looking at this in real life, sites such as iVillage and most other
e-commerce ventures generally write content that's at a fairly low reading
level and only skims the surface of any topic. The display of that text is very
easy to read, however, with good contrast in color, a standard font, small
blocks of text on a page, and plenty of white space.